A cursory look at simple current events illustrates the point. Critical thinking is at an all time low. Examples? Police agencies own and control all the heavy weaponry which they use to routinely shoot down African people in Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and Australia everyday with documentation and without reason. In the hundreds of years since slavery and colonialism created this scenario, millions of Africans have been murdered while only a very small handful - less than 100 - police have been retaliated against by the people, yet, you won't have a difficult time finding anybody who will tell you that police are under attack. This is the same logic that explains how humans kill hundreds of thousands of sharks per year while sharks bite, not kill, but bite about a dozen people per year, yet sharks are considered the predator.

Men routinely brutalize women, yet you can find people, including women everywhere, who defend the men that do it. The people of Greece vote to reject being re-colonized which brings condemnation down on them for not accepting 21st century slavery with gratitude. Meanwhile, the Libyan Jamihiriya provided free education and healthcare for its citizens while solving one of the great problems of modern times by building the Wasra dam project in the Sahara desert - which provided clean, potable drinking water to millions of people, yet they are bombed into submission by the capitalist powers and as the dust settles Qaddafi is called the dictator and Obama is heralded as the guardian of the free world?

People in the U.S. and other capitalist countries are bombarded with hardcore evidence daily confirming that no matter which political party, no matter which candidate, no matter what campaign promises are made, the interests of multi-national corporations always win out over the needs of everyday people, yet millions of people are still 100% committed to participating in the capitalist election cycle with the slogan that "this election will be the one that makes things different!" Then, when the capitalist governments continue to carry out their political agendas of exploitation around the world, not only do people still refuse to break ranks with them, but people, even so-called progressive people, continue to claim responsibility for the actions of the super rich by declaring "we did this" and "we did that" when the truth is you cannot even occupy the same physical space of the people dictating your life and your future. Or, as Kwame Ture said "the Democratic Party has people convinced that millionaires and homeless people have the same interests."

The climate continues to reflect global warming trends in every area from increasing average temperatures to melting glaciers to resulting weather chaos, yet you can still easily find people who deny that this entire phenomenon which is happening right before our very eyes, is happening.

Finally, the most conscious of the society are perfectly content to limit our capacity to fight back to mobilization direct action work, choosing the easy route of resisting against the system while the masses of people still remain confused, disorganized, and un-involved in the struggle for justice. This is clearly an unwinnable strategy since the numbers of people engaging in this mobilization/resistance work is small and thus unsustainable. Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is the masses of politically unconscious people who are just waiting on someone to organize with them and help them raise their consciousness. Although this is clearly the winning strategy e.g. the more people who understand, the more people who will support, the weaker the enemy, the higher the probability of victory. Yet, this consciousness raising approach requires a sustained organized approach to working which is much more difficult and much less exciting, therefore, although it's easily and clearly the work that needs to be done, serious, reasonable people refuse to do it simply because it's harder and will require more focus and direction.

Again, we go to Kwame Ture who used to say all the time that "capitalism makes that which should be crazy seem logical and that which should be logical seem crazy." My example that I use in presentations to youth is if I took a sound system to the quad of their school and got on the microphone talking about the need to get involved in organizations for justice and to do work to change this society, most of them would walk right by me while trying their best to pretend they are unaware of my presence and especially my message. This is true even though what I'm saying makes perfect sense to any rational minded person. By the same token, if I was on that same sound system, blurting out songs with crazy lyrics that degraded women, African people, and humanity, if my songs had a decent beat, and I have the capacity to deliver them in a way that resonates, people would forget about class and everything else to stop and listen to what I was saying, although what I'm saying is absolutely insane.

Well, what all of this says is there is obviously quite a bit of work to do and we are going to do our part to do it, but we cannot be successful unless you participate as well. We must get people involved in organizations and we must make sure those organizations have a strong political education process and that people are participating in that process seriously. Then we must insure that those organizers are doing strong work to organize our communities for revolutionary change. If all of this isn't happening, we will undoubtedly be in worse shape 20 years from now than we are today and so on and so on. Franz Fanon told us "each generation has its mission and you will either fulfill it or betray it." Changing the low level of political consciousness is the work. It always has been and it always will be.

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I don't see disagreement as a negative because I understand that Frederick Douglass was correct when he said "there is no progress without struggle." Our brains are muscles. Just like any other muscle in our body if we don't stress it and push it, the brain will not improve. Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once put it, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know it's there?"